Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday September 16, 2011 @01:50PM
from the defining-reasonable-prognostication dept.

El Puerco Loco writes with a followup to a story we discussed in May about the manslaughter charges facing six seismologists and one government official in Italy after an earthquake there killed 309 people and destroyed 20,000 buildings. The case is going to trial next week, and an article at Nature provides an update on how things stand:
"The indictments have drawn global condemnation. The American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), both in Washington DC, issued statements in support of the Italian defendants. ... The view from L'Aquila, however, is quite different. Prosecutors and the families of victims alike say that the trial has nothing to do with the ability to predict earthquakes, and everything to do with the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population. ... [The charges allege that the defendants] provided 'incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory information' to a public that had been unnerved by months of persistent, low-level tremors. [Prosecutor Fabio Picuti] says that the commission was more interested in pacifying the local population than in giving clear advice about earthquake preparedness. 'I'm not crazy,' Picuti says. 'I know they can't predict earthquakes. The basis of the charges is not that they didn't predict the earthquake. As functionaries of the state, they had certain duties imposed by law: to evaluate and characterize the risks that were present in L'Aquila.'"

Maybe "afford" isn't the right word. I use the cost of insurance as a gauge as to the riskiness of the area. Even within my neighborhood, there is wide variation in the cost of flood insurance depending on your elevation and which side of the creek you live on.

I'm pretty sure some people would rather not be dead even though their property was adequately insured.

No, he's saying that he's not an expert on what locations are risky and which locations are not. Are you? If you are, then that means that you're a professional seismologist, a flooding expert, and several other things all at the same time, which I highly doubt.

Regular people can't be asked to be experts at numerous sciences just to select a house to buy. However, insurance companies have people on staff who do consult with these experts, and then use this information to calculate insurance rates. Regul

i would say that depends - if the person who is the expert is telling you that that the smaller quakes are nothing to worry about and not a sign of anything larger and that everything will be fine.. then that person might have accepted the answer, stayed home, and died.

that is the basis of the case - and i can see the reasoning. if they can show that they knowingly made false claims about safety then they have a very strong case.

it would be like NY city right after 9/11 telling the pubic that the dust f

The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.

Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.

If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.

Yup. Coming soon, doctors will be charged for failing to bring the dead back to life. Way to step back a whole 1000 years or more. The geologists at worst might be negligent and need a reprimand from their professional college at best. But manslaughter? OK, how about charging the government too, because after all they clearly hired incompetent geologists.

The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.

Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.

If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.

The scientists in question not only failed to provide consistent and reliable information, they were told by the government to do so. So much for their dedication to truth. They also helped silence one of their own who refused to toe the government line. If you want to hold up scientists as shining examples of integrity, these are the wrong ones, dude.

The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.

Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.

If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.

The scientists in question not only failed to provide consistent and reliable information, they were told by the government to do so. So much for their dedication to truth. They also helped silence one of their own who refused to toe the government line. If you want to hold up scientists as shining examples of integrity, these are the wrong ones, dude.

If by "one of their own who refused to toe the government line" you're referring to Giampaolo Giuliani, you should keep in mind that the person in question is a ignorant, preposterous asshole with a penchant for conspirational victimism. He's the guy that maintains that he had predicted when and where the "big one" would have hit in that string of tremors, while his predictions were wrong by as much as a week (in time) and around 100km (IIRC; I'd have to check again, been some time since I debated the last time with someone actually believing his crap): errors which are insignificant in geological scales, but are enormously significant in terms of civil protection: had the DPC actually taken action to move the population following Giuliani's warning, the death toll could have been much higher than what it has been (think about it: you move people 100km away from the forecast epicenter location, and they end up being closer to the actual epicenter than they were originally).

There is a lot of blame that can be distributed around for what happened in L'Aquila, but what the inhabitants are looking for is a big, flashy scape goat rather than the actual responsible for the scale and dimension of the damage. Hitting the seismologist is probably just part of a bigger control strong-arming that is currently going on between the DPC and the research institutions that do the actual data collection and analysis (among other things). So while the populace is looking for a scape goat, the ones actually responsible for the damage will carry o their own way.

Most of the earthquake damage was actually concentrated on two kinds of buildings: very new ones, which built on the cheap and without respecting the anti-seismic criteria which are obligatory when building in areas (such as that one) which are known to be at high seismic risk, and very old ones: in these cases, what happened was that some buildings had "custom changes" done by their more modern inhabitants, changes that (not intentionally) significantly weakened their structure, causing them them to fall and to bat against other buildings that would have managed to resist otherwise (domino effect).

The lead responsibility for the actual damage rests mainly on two actors: a number of builders and contractors (the most infamous of which is Impregilo, which is rather well known to operate mostly by corruption —corruption to win contracts, corruption to get paid more than their job is worth, corruption for getting paid without actually doing the work, and so on and so forth—) and the actual local population. The fault does rest on the DPC shoulders because of it being the government agency specifically tasked with prevention and intervention in case of disaster, a task which it was quite obviously incapable of fulfilling correctly: not because of it's failure in communicating correctly with the population "in time", but because of the failure to exert the appropriate control for the whole 20-year span before the earthquake: prevention means checking that the new buildings do satisfy the anti-seismic criteria they are suppos

Nope. the crime is that they deliberately ignored all the information available at the moment, and they even suggested the people to get back at their own homes after some earthquakes had previously happened in such zones, even destroying some buildings. It's extremely probable that most of such research institutions were pressed to mislead the population due to the local government, which supported the speculative construction industry backed by some companies controlled by the local mafia.

Sorry, maybe I was a bit unclear on my previous post. Such previous incident happened no less than few days before the bigger earthquakes. And the reaction was something very different than a carelessness act. Some of the people in charge of the local seismic centers were wiretapped some day after talking with local homebuilders and politicians, and was pretty clear that they were aware that what happened was a direct consequence of their decision to ignore most of the advices coming from the center.

I should point out (lacking links to slashdot stories because I'm on a phone) that the scientists DID predict the earthquake, but were somethinglike 2 weeks early... they partially evacuated, and in under 2 weeks the authorities initiated "yelling fire in a theater" type charges against the scientists. Once those charges were made in haste, the actual earthquake came and people died.

From what I can deduce; authorities are blame shifting the damages that arose by hastily saying the scientists were wrong instead of admitting that they were right all along (albeit with imperfect prediction).

Did you read the article? Those people weren't clueless. They have lived in a high risk area for generations and knew that if they feel a tremor they should get out of the house immedietly. Which is what they did until the comittee went to the town in order to calm them down (supposedly under government pressure). In the meeting, one scientist said that the tremors in fact decrease the risk of an earthquake because they release the pressure. Wich sounded logical to a layman but is total bullshit. Another scientist who dared to disagree was sued and silenced.The people of the town concluded that there is nothing to be afraid of and left the precautions they practiced for centuries. This wasn't an honest mistake but deliberate spread of misinfromation.

True, if people were truly capable of rationality and free of hindsight bias. But they aren't.

If the suit is justified, then it was equally justified *before* the quake. The information was just as "imprecise" and "contradictory" then as now. Yet there was apparently no firing or disciplinary action, let alone a lawsuit. That proves this is a witch hunt.

You can't sue for the possibility of injury. You have to have an injury first. This isn't a suit, it's a charge of criminal negligence. Same deal. No damage = no charge. Now, if Italian law actually had a statute saying what you said, then they could be charged before the Earthquake, if the prosecutor could show the scientists were not reporting their data accurately. Which would be fine, if they had a statute before the fact. They likely did not, or nobody noticed. But once people died, then you had

No, you don't get sued for doing your job properly, and if you do you stuff it up their dumb asses and, if possible, counter-sue for whatever you consider appropriate: abuse of the courts, harassment by proxy, frivolous litigation, etc.

I know almost nothing about Italian law, but you might need to show that such warnings would have saved lives, but rather that such warnings could have saved lives. If the seismologists had a legal duty to care in issuing the warnings, and failed to do so. I could see some culpability for that.

I know almost nothing about Italian law, but you might need to show that such warnings would have saved lives, but rather that such warnings could have saved lives. If the seismologists had a legal duty to care in issuing the warnings, and failed to do so. I could see some culpability for that.

The case isn't about a missed warning that could have saved lives, it's about the commission issuing a statement of "no danger" that cost lives. From TFA:

Maurizio Cora... told prosecutors that after the 30 March shock, he and his family retreated to the grounds of L'Aquila's sixteenth-century castle; after the 11 p.m. foreshock on 5 April, he said his family "rationally" discussed the situation and, recalling the reassurances of government officials that the tremors would not exceed those already experienced, decided to remain at home, "changing our usual habit of leaving the house when we felt a shock". Cora's wife and two daughters died when their house collapsed.

The scientists and those who delivered the press conference are pointing fingers at each other, and in the meantime people are dead. It would seem the Italian perspective is "throw the whole lot on trial, and let the court figure it out".

Does it matter (to them) if they can? Go read up on the Amanda Knox situation, and I think you'll get the same impression I did - Whether she's guilty or not, the Italian justice system is seriously screwed up.

That this case can even make it to trial is a reinforcement of that belief.

Weren't they sued because they were public employees refusing to provide the public with all their data? The public paid for the data and the research. Seems reasonable the public should get to see what they bought.

Yup, agreed. I figure you probably were being sarcastic, but yeah: we do pay for DoD research and data, and we certainly should be able to see that. Too much is classified that doesn't need to be, and that which does need to be classified is classified for too long.

Yes because we all know that people "outside the ivory towers" are just "uneducated masses" who have no understanding of things like physics, chemistry and biology. With no chance of having taught themselves.

The refusers in question were academic researchers not government employees. Just because you receive a federal grant does not mean you are obligated to make all of your unpublished data, emails, and records available to extremist crackpots. The FOIA does apply "to data produced with federal support that are cited publicly and officially by a federal agency in support of an action that has the force and effect of law. "

Are you are referring to the fucking obvious DoS attack by mail with a co-ordinated bunch of requests arriving simultaneously each listing three countries in alphabetical order with no overlap? Would you prefer these people to work or to waste a few employee years on responses that would never be read anyway?

In America, climatologists get sued and harassed for making public statements about global warming.

You liberal, It's not called global warming anymore!

Global warming was bad terminology, because some idiot might think that every single spot on earth has to become warmer for the average temperature to rise. It's global climate change now. Which of course is also bad terminology, because change is good - or at least value neutral. (My suggestion would be to call it "The wrath of God for our sins of over-consumption and disrespect of creation". A bit long, but it would give you a majority.)

And what's more, it must increase day-on-day with no cooling phases. I predict that in a few months time, people will be pointing to some snow in the northern hemisphere and saying it is totally conclusive evidence that global warming can't possibly be taking place. We have entered an extreme cooling phase in the past 6 months.

Look at the article: they get sued to release their data and research, which was gathered using public funds. And, yeah, people are asking hard questions of scientists when they are asked to create massive new government programs and expenses. I don't have a problem with that.

Even if I tell you the risk of something is insignificant, that doesn't equate to zero, and that means it can still happen. So, I still don't see how they are not expecting actual prediction here when that is the only way to be sure.

The thing is they didn't say, "We think the risk is low", they said there was "no danger". I do not support this prosecution, but the scientists involved acted irresponsibly by trying to convince people there was no danger.

Now that's an interesting twist on things. Holding them accountable for not being truthful with the public. Depending on the details, I would generally consider the government official significantly more accountable than the seismologists. That is, unless the seismologists were complicit (rather than merely compliant) in the government official's attempt to make things seems more rosy than they were.

What is interesting is that the seismologists on trial appear to have called a special open session to basically discredit Giuliani (a laboratory tech) and calm the public. There wasn't a hesitation to report an impending earthquake, there was a statement of "many small tremors = no big earthquake = nothing to worry about" followed by an urging to go drink some wine. This caused many to ignore their routine (if a small tremor happens, the family sleeps outside or in a car). The break from routine (prompted by the statement of safety) cost many their families and/or lives as they slept inside "medieval" buildings that were not "anti-seismic".

There appears to be quite a bit of he said/she said between the scientists and those who took part in the press conference, and it's notable that the "commission did not issue its usual formal statement, and the minutes of the meeting were not even prepared, says Boschi, until after the earthquake had occurred."

Either way it's a real mess and many people died, and if the Nature article is correct, the press conference led people to believe it was safe when it was not. This caused more people to die then if a statement hadn't been issued. It's a difficult situation, and I wouldn't want to be the magistrate overseeing this.

Seismologists (and alarmists) had been saying since long time ago that in some moment a big quake will hit San Francisco area, and the city hasnt even tried to be evaquated. Had been predicted that in some moment could be a big tsunami generated by a volcano in the Canary Islands that could kill a lot of people in the caribbean and eastern north america, yet nothing had been done about it. And somewhere in a (probably long, but last year raised concerns) future the yellowstone caldera could blow, and still North America is populated, wasnt evaquated because that incoming predicted disaster. In fact, this cities [cracked.com] are predicted to be somehow destroyed in a not very far future, and still people live there.

Even predicting that something will happen don't mean that it really will, or when, or with a strenght enough to worry about, or that authorities will do something, or that people, even warned, will do anything. If some of those predictions become true, lots of people will die, should the people predicting those things be treated as mass murderers if their predictions ever become true?

For all the non lawyers at/. this may seem a travesty but this is such a brilliant piece of legal work by the prosecutor. Not only has he become famous -- instantly, he has a shot at changing the way the country functions and has managed to get untouchable people to be touched. Plus he has managed to get attention from the international community and the heads of his state. I expect that he has a good shot at putting the scientists behind bars after which he will move on to a well deserved legal career as

I expect the Italian government is having a hard time recruiting scientists and engineers to work in government posts. Why would you if some grandstanding prosecutor will go after you because you dissembled like a government bureaucrat. Had they issued unambiguous risk assessments of living in antique masonry buildings the management up the food chain would have been after their scalps for causing a panic.

Three thousand years of documented history isn't enough? It's not like the place became seismically active overnight. Get a fucking grip you Italian morons. Jesus I wish I could slap the whole fucking country from here.

The Italian court assembled an international panel of nine expert seismologists to write a report on the current state of earthquake prediction. The US representative was USC professor Thomas Jordan who runs the Southern California Earthquake Center. I heard him summarize this report in Golden Colorado last month. ironically it was few days following the Colorado and Virgina quakes.

Seismologists mostly prefer using the term "forecasting" instead of prediction for couple reasons. First, forecasting pres

"Prosecutors and the families of victims alike say that the trial has nothing to do with the ability to predict earthquakes, and everything to do with the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population"

So let me see if I have this straight... they aren't upset about the inability to predict earthquakes, they are upset because they didn't know how severe the upcoming earthquake was likely to be.

They're probably very good geologists trying to do a difficult job. They screwed up this time. Rather than prosecute them, time and energy should be directed toward improving the geology department, rather than trying to prosecute those who are only trying to help as best they can.

They aren't being tried for doing their jobs, they are being tried for allegedly NOT doing their job. The point is that they intentionally disseminated misleading information and not following the correct procedures, not that they didn't predict earthquakes. At least that is what the prosecutor claims. I have no idea if he is correct or not.

The problem here is not that they failed to accurately predict the earthquake. The problem is that they tried to reassure people that there was no danger, when, in fact, there was deadly danger. It did not help that there was a fear monger trying to spread panic and burnish his reputation by successfully predicting 100 of the last 10 major earthquakes.

Earthquakes mark the history of L'Aquila, as the city is situated partially on an ancient lake-bed that amplifies seismic activity.[1][2]

On December 3, 1315, the city was struck by an earthquake which seriously damaged the San Francesco Church. Another earthquake struck on January 22, 1349, killing about 800 people. Other earthquakes struck in 1452, then on November 26, 1461, and again in 1501 and 1646. On February 3, 1703 a major earthquake struck the town. More than 3.000 people died and almost all the churches collapsed; Rocca Calascio, the highest fortress in Europe was also ruined by this event, yet the town survived. L'Aquila was then repopulated by decision of Pope Clement XI. The town was rocked by earthquake again in 1706. The most serious earthquake in the history of the town struck on July 31, 1786, when more than 6.000 people died. On June 26, 1958 an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude struck the town.

On April 6, 2009, at 01:32 GMT (03:32 CEST) an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck central Italy with its epicentre near L'Aquila, at 42.4228N 13.3945E.[3] The earthquake caused damage to between 3,000 and 11,000 buildings in the medieval city of L'Aquila.[4] Several buildings also collapsed. 308 people were killed by the earthquake, and approximately 1,500 people were injured. Twenty of the victims were children.[5] Around 65,000 people were made homeless.[6] There were many students trapped in a partially collapsed dormitory.[7] The April 6 earthquake was felt throughout Abruzzo; as far away as Rome, other parts of Lazio, Marche, Molise, Umbria, and Campania.

Large earthquakes have killed thousands of people in this town. The people must have known about it. It doesn't take a Geologist to tell you that if a major earthquake killed 3000 in the town 300 years ago that it could happen again.

But really, "making sure they never work in geology again seems like an acceptable solution."? It seems reasonable to strip a scientist of his livelyhood because government officials misunderstood and made an incorrect announcement? It's reaso

Or maybe we could do the sane thing and not hold anyone responsible for acts of nature that can't be perfectly predicted and/or controlled?

so your saying that because a hurricane can't be "perfectly predicted and/or controlled" we should hold no one responsible for not telling people they should leave an area that is below see level and is very likely going to be hit by a hurricane in the near future.

there is a difference between trying to predict - and adequately warning people of what might happen.

this case is for the latter - the prosecution believes they either:A) didn't warn people when they should ofB) knowingly misled the people of the

Because engineering has some very well established science behind it, and on top of that you can overbuild to get around uncertainty. Seismology is worlds away from that level of certainty, and you're suppose to give accurate predictions so there is no equivalent to overbuilding.

we allow engineers to be sued for failed engineering designs. this is a failed earthquake warning from a person supposed to be responsible for providing earthquake warnings. why is it so different ?

Because most of the time, engineering disasters result very clearly from a human error. Most of the things that engineers do are based on very sound science. Yes, there have been incidents like plane crashes that resulted from misunderstanding crack propagation and fatigue - but most of the time there is a design flaw that violated current standards.

Predicting the size and scope of a future earthquake is based on much less firm science. So long as these guys were within the generally accepted error bars of

Here's a better question: do we allow engineers to be sued for engineering designs that failed due to an earthquake? The answer is that we do if the earthquake was smaller than the design was required to be able to handle by local building codes and/or the engineers certification. In the case of gross negligence or fraud, the engineer can even get criminal charges like manslaughter. If the earthquake was above the level the design was required to handle, then we don't (unless the collapse somehow revealed s

Citizen: "An earth quake happened?! You said there was a low risk?! What the hell?"Seismologist: "Exactly, I said low risk, not no risk. That something is unlikely to happen does not mean it can't, or won't happen. There is no way to be completely certain of the odds of an event like an earthquake".

I think part of the problem is that the numbers said that an earthquake was "probable" and "may cause severe damage" but management decided to override the numbers and have the report written stating that an earthquake was "unlikely" and "could cause some damage".

The models gave a range of possible outcomes and management had them write in the report the better/best case not the worst case (which actually happened).

Amanda's defense wasn't to blame. That a justice system could put two people in jail for the murder, then a month later convict a third person of the same crime (and revise the entire story of the crime to account for this third actor, which by the way had absolutely no evidence supporting the story) who was never mentioned when the first two were convicted. This turned a three person sex orgy gone wrong into a four person sex orgy murder. Not only that but the third conviction admits to being in the house

The most surprising aspect of the Knox trial was not that the Italian justice system is so screwed up; I think most people aware of it knew that. It's that so many Europeans cheered against Knox, presumably because she committed the unspeakable crime of being American. The English, particularly, seemed incredibly anti-Knox, which is doubly sad considering that most of American constitutional protections arose out of English jurisprudence.

Everything bad that ever happened is usually the fault of a number of contributors, none of whom should be let free of responsibility just because of some childish libertarian misapprehension of what personal responsibility means.

I don't wish this upon anyone and for the record I've lived in earthquake prone areas. This situation reminds me of a bash.org quote where the poster was storing 300gigs of work and misc files on his neighbor's computer via WIFI and the horror of no longer being able to connect to them. Storing precious/irreplaceable stuff in a risky place is not a wise idea.

They've already taken the brunt of the responsibility.

Of course they did, they lived in an area which has a known history of often fatal earthquakes by their own choosing. Unless they were forced to live t

Do you know the totality of the hazard to you in your present location? If so, how?

Because someone quoted their data, or an analysis of it, to you.

If they knowingly lied and you did not know the true risk, and something adverse occurred, you indeed would have a case against them.

The problem with these scientists is that in this case they did, allegedly, operate like Government. They made political statements, to sway the public's emotions, rather than scientific ones containing the true facts.